Super Bowl 50 to San Francisco Bay Area; Houston gets 51

“The Bay Area has been waiting for a [title] game since 1985. We have a stadium now … we are just thrilled and couldn’t be happier about this,” said Daniel Lurie, a leader of the San Francisco bid.

“We are going to get to highlight the best the Bay Area has to offer.”

That includes donating 25 percent of the proceeds from the game to fight poverty in the San Francisco Bay Area, York said.

The Dolphins were denied public money for a stadium upgrade in South Florida following widespread complaints about the public investment sunk into the Marlins’ new baseball home.

Multibillionaire Dolphins owner Stephen Ross contends $350 million in stadium improvements are badly needed, but he doesn’t want to pay for them by himself. Nor does he want a scaled-down renovation of the 26-year-old facility.

“I suspect there’s a couple of state reps down in Miami-Dade County where I live who are going to look at this and realize this was a huge mistake,” South Florida bid committee chairman Rodney Barreto said. “We had the better bid. I could just look at the body language from the NFL staff. It’s a shame. We may not see another Super Bowl for another 10 years.”

But, Ross said, South Florida “won’t stop trying” to get one.

Goodell said some owners privately told him they were concerned with the stadium situation in Miami.

49ers owner John York suggested that San Francisco’s winning effort offered a lesson in political cooperation.

“If this Super Bowl can show the state of California and other communities the opportunity with a new stadium to bring in fresh business, it could be a catalyst that stadiums can be built for Oakland and San Diego, which are in need of new ones,” he said. “This may be the impetus to get one of those done.”

For years, it was thought the NFL would seek to stage the 50th Super Bowl in Los Angeles, where the first one was played (but did not sell out) on Jan. 15, 1967. But with no franchise in LA and no suitable stadium projects approved, that hope disappeared.

Next Feb. 2, the game goes outdoors in a cold-weather site for the first time, at MetLife Stadium in the New Jersey Meadowlands. If that gamble pays off for the NFL, look for other cities in similar climates — Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver — to bid for future Super Bowls.

The 2015 game will be played in the Phoenix area.

Earlier Tuesday, owners approved a $200 million loan for stadium construction in Atlanta. The multipurpose stadium could cost as much as $1 billion, with team owner Arthur Blank committed to funding most of it. Blank, speaking at the NFL’s spring meetings, called the decision by the team owners an “important milestone” in moving the project forward. The owners also approved financing for renovations of stadiums in Charlotte and Philadelphia.